Addiction. Seriously, though, I don’t say that the game doesn’t have ANY appeal to gamers; it does. But it’s appealing to a lot fewer than it used to. Sure, many of the older, veteran players have changed priorities over the years, but the younger set have no idea what the game used to be like when “gamers” were the #1 priority before corporate “managers” and stockholder concerns became #1. And I don’t lay the blame at the developers’ and designers’ feet.
Things began to change when Blizzard Entertainment became Activision-Blizzard; gamers slipped to #2 when shareholders and stock prices became #1. When the move was made from the garage to the boardrooms of the corporation, the game changed. There’s a HUGE difference between gamers from the board game generation, and gamers from the mobile game generation. Not only are expectations different, but attention spans are different, motivation is different, and the amount of effort that’s willing to be put in is different.
Well that’s your opinion and you are welcome to it, however many reasons have been given in this forum as to why WOW doesn’t have the following it did before. I’ve been making a list. I’ll add your suggestion to it.
Reasons people have given for the “Only reason people are no longer subscribed”.
When WOW was first created it was one of the only D&D like MMOs around. Now there are hundreds of new ones each year.
In an industry where 5 years is middle aged and 10 years is an antique, WOW is an 18 year old game competing with tons of new technology.
The trend these days is toward social media and mobile where WOW doesn’t play well.
Some say it’s the story writting particularly in BFA and ShadowLands.
Or it’s the toxic culture of the players that’s causing people to leave.
Others point to specific abilities like “borrowed power” that have been taken away.
Next we hear that it’s time gating
Death. Wow players aren’t getting any younger, and younger players don’t share the same attraction to MMOs… particularly ones dominated by older people.
The questing requirements are not long and grinding enough.
The questing requirements are to long and grinding.
They heard Activision say: “If you don’t like the game, go play something else.”
or… “The game is not meant for you”.
SL had too many mobs close together.
The Horde/Alliance cold war.
The China fiasco.
No regular flying at expansion launch is what killed the game.
Dear Blizz you cut this feature I loved so I quit.
Fed up with the loot system/RNG
Want an MMO with less focus on dungeons and raids
They want RPG content
No player housing
Long server down times.
People don’t like power systems.
LFR !!!
WoW is too hard core.
Blizzard cut employee bonuses by 58% despite getting a strong fiscal year.
Quite a comprehensive list. Kudos for putting it together. I didn’t know my take was so unusual that it wasn’t already on the list. It looks like the only difference is that my take on it isn’t the “only” reason I feel it doesn’t feel like Warcraft any more. It’s one of many reasons, and I’d venture that there are as many reasons as there are players who feel that the game has changed.
But thanks for adding mine. (Might I suggest archiving this list? I’m sure that somewhere down the road we’ll need it as a reference point again.)
Wait. I’m going to call BS on this one; at the time when WoW came out there were literally dozens of MMORPGs ranging from classless systems like Ultima Online to the more structured like Dark age of camelot or Everquest as well as who knows how many Korean properties.
Really the biggest things WoW had going for it at launch were that it was comparatively more forgiving and also had huge brand name recognition.
Of course, it doesn’t. They began to ignore the culture of every faction and race for no apparent reason when it historically has been one of WoW’s strong points. Now everything is the same and there is virtually no difference between the major factions/races within the game.
Because according to the new creative team appeasing Larry Fink, their ESG overlord, everything has to appeal to modern audiences, so there can’t be any racial or faction differences. Everyone just has to be a carbon copy of everyone else, but just with a different outer appearance. What a stale world Azeroth has become. Might as well call it World of NewYorkCraft.
If I could have kept the links to the people who posted those reasons I would give it to you and you could go back how ever many months, find the note and reply to it. Saddly I don’t have that information.
Having traveled most of the country and gotten across the board to New York, I assure you the folks there are still as fast paced and step upon -you- as a stepping stone, live and let die as they come. There is no where more harder, faster and more cut throat than NYC, not even Las Vegas. So I’m super curious how you’re measuring.
when it comes to humans women on wow who have no magic than yes they are weaker than the males if we talking lets say not humans like orc warrior or vrykul of corse it would make sense but wow is not one for realism also lorewise only females in night elf culture were ever allowed to become sentinels ( the soldier group of night elf society) and only night elf women were allowed to be priests lorewise and only men lorewise pre wow were allowed to be druids. in game things dont make much sense or respect the games culture or lore nowadays.
Azeroth is now one big city where every quest hub has one Night Elf, one human, one orc, one dwarf, and they all have the same culture, same ideals, same speech patterns, and so on.
Much like a big city in the West (New York was my example), where on each corner you have one white guy, one black guy, one asian guy, and they all have the same Starbucks cup in their hand, scrolling social media on their smart phone in their other hand, wearing the same type of clothes, speaking the same language, in largely the same accent.
Night elves used to have a unique culture, where the women were sentinels, the men were druids, they all disliked mages, they were all distrustful of outsiders. You could vary things up by individual, such as having a specific night elf be more welcoming to other races, in contrast to the rest of the kaldorei, or maybe you had a female night elf that somehow broke social norms and learned to be a druid, etc. And having that strong racial culture to contrast to even made exceptions actually interesting.
Night elfs are now just like humans with different skin tones and pointy ears. All of them accept any class, make no distinction between men and women, freely accept outsiders as long as they’re from the Alliance, and will probably also start accepting Horde members soon.
Basically the current devs are just mirroring the cultural and racial dynamics of the city they live in into the game.
night elves and blood elves require the same thing, every race on wow can get adicted to magic including the night elves ESPECIALLY the night elves as the first high elves WERE night elves and needed that. also humans have a limited life span elves as confirmed by elves such as lorash( who is cannon and is in the game atm hes an undead elf in the undead heritage quest) do not die of old age his mother and others were alive PRE sundering. that includings ALLL elves.
Night Elves don’t require magic to live. The Nightborne are not Night Elves. They started off that way, but thanks to being trapped in a shield for 10,000 years. They had to subsist on magic from the Nightwell. They are similar to the original High Borne, who coincidentally also sided with the Burning Legion against the Night Elves.
Additionally the High Born made it a point to distinguish themselves from the Night Elves. The High Born are not Night Elves.
as i said they still can gain the addiction to magic when they first started using druidism it helped with this ALOT for several former magic users in pre exile night elf culture many are druids now, and many non highborn magic users as not all the magic users in night elf society were highborn.
Seriously, though, I don’t say that the game doesn’t have ANY appeal to gamers; it does. But it’s appealing to a lot fewer than it used to. Sure, many of the older, veteran players have changed priorities over the years, but the younger set have no idea what the game used to be like when “gamers” were the #1 priority before corporate “managers” and stockholder concerns became #1. And I don’t lay the blame at the developers’ and designers’ feet.
Kudos for putting it together. I didn’t know my take was so unusual that it wasn’t already on the list. It looks like the only difference is that my take on it isn’t the “only” reason I feel it doesn’t feel like Warcraft any more. It’s one of many reasons, and I’d venture that there are as many reasons as there are players who feel that the game has changed.